There’s a better way to tackle the coronavirus pandemic than the tactics President Joe Biden is trying.
Even if many people are too nonchalant about the pandemic, the liberal overreaction and impulse toward central command-and-control are counterproductive. Massive shutdowns produce significant cultural problems of their own, many mandates spur backlashes or are utterly impractical or perhaps unconstitutional, and masking requirements for children may do more harm than good.
While some limited mandates may be legal and advisable, they should be a carefully used tool, not bludgeons used indiscriminately. The elements of better anti-coronavirus policy, national, state, and local, should include the following.
Continued and expanded testing availability. To his credit, Biden is doing this. Likewise with continued and expanded vaccine availability. For both testing and vaccinations, government encouragement of voluntary compliance, along with providing easy-to-access resources, is the absolute key to slowing the spread of the virus. And government mandates for both testing and vaccines are defensible if, and only if, they are carefully targeted for certain situations or venues.
What is at least as important is government protection for private enterprises that choose to require testing or vaccines. Businesses have every right to protect their employees and customers from contagions and states that banned companies from asking for “vaccine passports” are violating First Amendment associational rights while making it easier for the deadly virus to spread.
Meanwhile, about a quarter of adults remain opposed to accepting vaccines. The more they are given mandates or “orders” to be inoculated, the more they resist. For a fraction of the money spent trying fruitlessly to mandate compliance, government officials could hire focus-group survey experts, psychologists, linguistic experts, and even top students of the art of persuasion (cartoonist Scott Adams among them) to figure out a better way to convince anti-vaxxers, of their own free will, to secure the shots to protect themselves and others.
One sure thing, proved in World War II and in private responses to natural disasters aplenty, is that there is a strain in the American character that balks at edicts and ultimatums but that eagerly and selflessly joins in shared, salvific enterprise. It is sometimes astonishing to realize how bad most politicians are at communicating to those not already of their own mindset, but better communication in a free society can achieve far more than any ham-handed assertion of Big Brother’s authority.
Meanwhile, the single most important thing government can do is to use better treatment to lessen the suffering, and the societal risk of further virus transmission, for those who do contract COVID-19. Biden is stepping up the effort to make monoclonal antibody treatments available — and, granted, they take two hours, rather than a two-second “jab,” and they cost 100 times as much as vaccines — but he isn’t doing enough.
Indeed, treatments should be the single biggest area of emphasis. If the virus can be treated so it’s no longer deadly, then it matters far less if it continues to spread. That’s why it’s not just that monoclonal antibodies that should be emphasized and provided. Rather than fighting partisan battles over huge new social spending, Biden should put even more government resources into developing and making available multiple treatments — whether of remdesivir or of Tactic-R from Great Britain, or anything else, including repurposed drugs, that proves helpful.
If even half as much effort and resources went to treatments as to mandates and compliance, then suffering and deaths would be reduced dramatically, as would the length of time in which each infected individual could be contagious to others.
All of that said, there are some shutdowns and some mandates that even a free society should countenance in the name of public health. We know the coronavirus spreads more easily in enclosed spaces and at close quarters than outdoors. For example, no matter how well-ventilated airlines say their planes are, common sense says infectiousness is greater there than at, say, an outdoor family barbeque. For government to require either masking or proof of vaccination for flights, with reasonable and simple exceptions for some children or those with health restrictions, can be a well-warranted imposition of state authority.
Likewise, local governments faced with major outbreaks temporarily shutting down indoor barrooms, where people notoriously mix and mingle at close quarters, is not at all unreasonable.
People can be reasonable. Plenty of people will accept targeted, temporary closures or orders, especially if the reasons are explained, even if they rebel against a blunderbuss assault on freedom and their livelihoods. It is human nature to react badly to overreactions, to distrust alarmism that looks like an excuse for power grabs, and to question authorities who can’t keep their stories straight. What we want is moderation, sensibleness, respect, and the truth.
The whole world is dealing with the single worst health crisis of the past 100 years and the worst death toll of any conflagration since World War II. We can’t just shrug this thing away. But here in the United States, a more targeted, multipronged effort emphasizing treatment and persuasion rather than government mandates that fly in the face of American culture and tradition can significantly mitigate the damage while uniting the country in a common cause rather than turning the whole fight into a political football.
Let’s mobilize, but let’s do it right.
